Showing posts with label Nationwide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nationwide. Show all posts

Monday 27 May 2013

Slide Comes Before A Fall


..and my how I fell , wandering into the bathroom barefoot and 18 stone of me hit the Amtico floor with a fair jolt . Somehow the floor and Kitchen ceiling were undamaged , while I survived with a sore back and bruising. Think that the Tom Petty song title is fairly appropriate for the situation.

After that have had fun with passwords and mobile phone and broadband technology with Orange and Virgin , eventually succeeding despite the best endeavours of the website "designers" to make their site unusable. I've worked with a few programmers and one of them cauled Paul who I worked for at the National Bus Company gave me these three rules for a program , though they can be applied to anything you do:

  1. It must work and do what it is supposed to do
  2. It must be legible and easily understood and documented
  3. It must be efficient
It seems very few designers / programmers take those maxims into account these days. Many of the people on the end of the phone are fine but they do have to work with systems that make their job very difficult , although you get some places that actually blame the incompetence of the user , with "You must have done something wrong" or "Try later" , as though some magic is going to suddenly make things work. If it doesnt work now , it wont work tomorrow unless it gets fixed. I'm thinking Tesco , Barclays and Nationwide for this particular bad attitude.

Anyway it's the end of the Bank Holiday , work starts again tomorrow , and it's almost time for bed .